Whitman: On average man:

I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;)

—Never were such sharp questions ask’d as this day;

Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God;
15
Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;

His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere—he colonizes the Pacific, the archipelagoes;

With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale engines of war,

With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography, all lands;

—What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, passing under the seas?
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Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?

From Years of the Modern